A Computer Scientist Makes the Case for Speculative Fiction - Los Angeles Review of Books

"PREDICTION IS VERY difficult, especially if it's about the future," said Physics Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr. Bohr was presumably talking about the vagaries of quantum mechanical subatomic life, but the statement holds true at other scales too. Predicting the future is tough, and any good scientist knows enough to hedge his or her bets. That's what error bars are all about. It's why science usually proceeds methodically: hypotheses are formulated, experiments conducted, observations collated, and data evaluated.